House of Sand and Secrets

by Cat Hellisen

  “And you’re not?”

  “I’m here and there.” He grins at me.

  “You bastard. I’ll want a re-enactment.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be able to oblige.”

  I sigh and push loose tendrils of hair back from my face. “Fine, teach me.”

  “A challenge.” He’s secure here, playful, lightly mocking.

  I’m in his territory even though the head space is mine. My mouth twists wryly at this, and I almost smile.

  He steps closer and rests his hands on my shoulders. “Well start with a single room. It has to be a place you felt safe – where nothing bad could come for you.”

  That’s easy enough – my tower room at the old manor. I was the only one with the key to it, my mother’s kindest gift to me. The first thing that shimmers into existence is the bed with its old notched varnish, and the dark blue coverlet. “It’s so real.” I reach out and touch it. It’s solid. The wood is cool and hard, the coverlet soft, the wool of unicorn kids.

  “It is. It’s more real than the rest of the world.”

  “If you start quoting bad verse at me I’m going back,” I warn him.

  “Barbarian,” he says, laughing a little. “It’s good, Felicita.” He motions to my childhood bed. “Really, a good start. Just keep remembering the room with that kind of attention to detail.”

  “That’s it?” I say as the rest of my bedroom unrolls around me. I laugh in delight as the rich patterns of my carpet crawl under my feet and the stone walls spring up, the roof beams shooting overhead. “Ha!” My entire room is there in an aching, very real way. It smells of home. “It’s so easy.”

  “No it’s not. You’re a natural magic-user. I should have known you’d take to this. You must miss this place,” he says softly, then shakes his head. “Not that easy. I’m going to go now. After I’ve left, think of something simple, the name of a favourite pet, and hide it here, then leave.”

  He flicks out, disappearing so quickly I am left with a cold stone in my throat. There is a flash of red like traces of ribbons, as if they bind him to me, then they too are gone. I do what he says, then let go of the vision of my bedroom.

  I am back in the physical world and it’s like being smashed in the head with a hammer.

  * * *

  Blood is everywhere, bursting from my nose and dribbling out of my mouth in warm spurts. I try press my nose, my hands cupped over my face but the blood runs between my fingers. I’m swallowing blood, choking on it.

  “Shit.” Jannik scrabbles over to find a length of silk and tugs it free before holding it up to my face. “Hold on, it will pass.”

  He presses the cloth in place for me and eventually the dribble slows. Carefully I pull the silk away; it’s almost black, dripping over my skirts and Jannik’s shirt. There’s a pattern of spray across his face.

  The room slants, slips away from me. I can feel myself falling but even though I command my arms to reach out to catch on to something – anything – they remain slack. No part of my body responds and I feel terror and then

  nothing.

  * * *

  When I wake, I’m lying stretched out on the couch. The soft blanket is tucked under my chin, and my face feels clean, the blood wiped away.

  The light in the room is dim. The fatcandle is sputtering, making shadows leap along the walls.

  I blink.

  “So ask me a question,” Jannik says from the other side of the room. I turn to his voice and a dull pain clamps my head. “Don’t move, Felicita.” He sounds weary.

  “What-” I lick my lips, swallow. My throat is dry and I’m parched. “What question – oh.” I close my eyes; let the soothing dark caress the pain away. “What was the name of my favourite pet?”

  I can feel him in my head, walking like a ghost between my memories. In my dream room, I strengthen the walls, hold them fast. It’s surprisingly tiring.

  Eventually, I feel him retreat. “No idea,” he says. “Well done.”

  I groan and shift my head slowly, inching my cheek toward the pillow until I can see him. He’s cloaked in the shadows, but the paleness of his skin stands out, cool as a Long Night candle. “That’s it, then?”

  “Hardly. It’s a start. You’ll work on building the rest of your house, though it’ll take years, and when you’re done, every thought and secret you want to keep your own will be inside and I’ll never be allowed in unless invited.”

  “Years,” I echo. “That’s disheartening.”

  He shrugs. “I warned you.”

  I sit up gingerly. Every part of my body has been bludgeoned into an aching pulp. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “About three hours. As soon as you’re ready to travel I’ve made arrangements for us to stay in rented apartments. It won’t be the luxury you’re accustomed to, but it’ll be better than this.”

  “Jannik.” I can feel now the dampness between my legs, can smell clearly the salty musk. Even if I barely remember it, it happened. “I have slept on sacks in a house with no windows. I think I’ll survive a rented apartment.”

  He smiles at me. “Of course you will.”

  And I will send a servant to buy me rake’s parsley. There’s no point living up to Harun’s Visions.

  SILK ARMOUR, GLASS ARMOUR

  My head feels bludgeoned in, but I help Jannik with the moving arrangements as best I can. Not that we have anything left to move. Our other holdings are occupied, and neither are suitable. The Grove Estate is too far south, out of the city and in the orange country downriver, and the house on Chantery street far too small. Besides, Eline’s men will know if we return to either of those. Jannik has said he will find us a place, and I believe him. Somehow, he will cover our tracks.

  I supervise from the heat of the offices, have clothes brought to me, new contracts written out for the servants. Master Twissel, Mrs. Winterborn, and Mrs. Palmer meet with me, and it’s with relief that I realize how much I can trust them, how much they will do for me. They are family, and we have all lost a home. Mrs. Winterborn’s narrow face is crumpled. She still has the ring of ivory house keys and she flicks them this way and that, the bright knocking sound sharp as a crack in a wall.

  There is nothing left of Riona to send home, nothing left of her life and belongings. “We will provide for her brother,” I say. We can send her salary in as a kind of pension. Even my brother would have made sure that the family of the dead were paid off. It feels so cheap, so utterly useless in the face of what has happened. But I cannot bring her back to life. All I can offer is coin.

  Mrs. Palmer sits with her hand over her mouth to keep her sobs quiet.

  A constant stream of messengers and servants file in and out of the offices and my seal stamps page after page in an inky blur. It will take a lot of silk to pay for us to rebuild our life, our name. We work until my head feels ready to roll right from my shoulders, and I wouldn’t even care.

  I hardly see Jannik, and when he returns that evening, I am only half-awake. The exhaustion has filled up the hollows of my bones, weighted me down and turned my mind to oily sludge.

  “Come on, Felicita,” he says, and under the joking tone, the strain shows like support wires.

  My head is pillowed on my arms, and I feel no urge to rise from the desk I’d fallen asleep at. “This is fine,” I mumble at him. “Between this and the couch, I think the desk might be the more comfortable.” The sour copper of blood tickles the back of my throat, and I cough.

  He rests one hand against the back of my neck. “I see you made some progress with your wardrobe.”

  “Hush, I’ve done more than find wash-water and pretty dresses.” I manage to lever my head up. The room is dark, lamps unlit.

  “Our coach is waiting,” Jannik says.

  * * *

  I wake in an unfamiliar room with pale yellow bedding and walls of ivory. Despite the warm colour, the room feels unwelcoming and the smell of it is wrong. I catch a glimpse of my face in a mirrored wardrobe. “I n
eed a bath. Dear Gris.” I must be particularly ripe by now. A hand basin in an office is no substitute. There are marks of dried blood on my pillow. I barely remember the journey here; it shifts, slippery and fractured.

  “I’ve already had the servants arrange everything.”

  I look up at Jannik. He’s dressed, neat and perfectly turned out. It’s like nothing happened at all to ruffle him. Maybe it didn’t.

  “How are you so . . . .”

  “So what?” He frowns. A knock sounds at the door. “Enter.”

  The familiar face of my lady’s maid, Cornelia, appears. She’s wide-eyed, holding a tea tray in front of her and just the smell of it almost makes me cry from joy. Mrs. Winterborn must have made a speedy recovery, if the maids are already nervous as cats.

  “So bloody chipper.” I am going to drink that entire pot dry and still ask for more, I can already tell.

  Jannik laughs. “I’m not the one whose head got rearranged. I’ll see you at breakfast. We’ve nefarious deeds to discuss.”

  After he’s gone I drink tea and listen to the household sounds of normality. Cornelia is arranging my bath and, presumably, new clothes for me. I have no idea what she’s found, as almost everything I had is currently drifting in the smoke over MallenIve.

  My poor little Riona is dead because of me, I have no home, my marriage has been completely rearranged, and I am about to go into a sphynx’s nest armed only with my name, to save a man I hate. And yet I am oddly content. Languorous, even. I finish my tea and lie back, wondering what has become of my world.

  After my bath, I find Cornelia has laid out a dark sage dress I last wore more than a year ago. It is distinctly Pelimburg in fashion, with a severity that is in stark contrast with the frivolous colours and patterns House Mata has made so fashionable here. There is glass beading, to be sure, but the designs are subtle, the beads merely a darker green than the dress.

  I touch the silk, smooth it out. “Where did this come from?”

  “Lord Pelim had your old wardrobe in storage, ma’am.”

  Did he, indeed? I had thought these relics long since handed on. I smile thinly. It seems I am going to don Pelimburg armour when I face the MallenIve princes. How fitting.

  * * *

  “What are your plans?” I ask Jannik. We’re in the breakfast room, and the front door bell is ringing non-stop, as parcels and orders are delivered. Distantly, the sound of voices, the papery crumple as servants unwrap our replacements for our old life.

  Even in this stranger’s apartments we will temporarily call our own, Jannik is engaged in reading the Courant. He seems unflappable. He sets the paper down. “Harun first.”

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps to see if he is still alive.” Jannik raises one eyebrow. “Or are you ready to abandon them now?”

  “Go on.” If I have to deal with that bully of a House son, I will be well fed. Eggs and bacon and grilled tomatoes and salt-fish. I’m ravenous. The past few days have caught up with me. It all seems a nightmarish blur of fire and ash and blood. And skin, and sweetness. I smile, tight and small as a new secret, before I look up again.

  “While I make arrangements there, I’ll need you to set up a meeting with Carien.” He frowns. “I’m not sure exactly what you’re planning to say to her when you offer me over.”

  “Ah, I have thought on it,” I say. “She still wants to paint you, as far as I know.”

  “Oh, that.” His shakes his head in bitter amusement. “It seems that I shall finally have my portrait done. You can put it up in the Pelimburg University along with the rest of your family’s. That should stir a fire under them.”

  “My mother may well have an apoplexy.”

  “She probably deserves to have one.”

  We skirt around the edges of what we are planning, blunting the reality of it with banter. We say nothing about what we have done, and what we plan to do with it. Jannik’s insecurity and uncertainty tug at me, faintly, like a butterfly-fish pulling on a line, and I wonder what I am giving away to him. It’s not as if I am so sure of my own plans that Jannik could not sense the fear beneath my bravado.

  Whatever he knows, he is polite enough not to tell me, and I begin to relax. We can do this. Together, we will find out what we need to bring Isidro back.

  The curious tightening around my heart as I think of his name could be from either of us.

  * * *

  By the time we reach House Guyin, however, my nerves are back. The house is too cold and stark and forbidding to let me forget what we’re planning to do.

  We find Harun drunk in the front lounge, stinking higher than a Lam heap out in the warren of the Hoblands.

  “Dear Gris!” I pull all the curtains open and bright sunlight comes flooding in, illuminating the dust hanging in the air. The room is neglected and has a thick sour misery rubbed into the walls and the furniture. “Pull yourself together, Harun.”

  Jannik hangs back, watching me rampage through Harun’s property.

  “You’re an evil cow of a woman,” Harun slurs.

  “It’s barely ten in the morning,” I snap back. “Is this how you plan to deal with what’s happened – by wallowing in your own filth and drinking like a bloated old rake?”

  “I was trying to,” he points out. “And doing a damn fine job of it.”

  “Give me that.” I snatch the half-empty wine bottle he’s holding, and tip the contents over his head. It’s only my apparently vast hidden wells of self-control that prevent me from sending the bottle after them.

  “You – fuck – bloody woman.” He’s too inebriated to stand, so he rages at me from all fours, swaying like an old nilly in a knacker’s yard. It doesn’t have the effect he’d like. He clatters among the empty bottles, sending them rolling under the furniture and gathering trails of dust and Gris-knows what else.

  “Oh yes, a bloody woman. How dare I come in to your house and point out to you what an enormous bullying idiot you are.” I set the empty bottle down on the table, and it clatters over and rolls off. I watch it. It’s not as if one more will make a difference to the state of the floor.

  “Well thank you from saving me the trouble of saying it–”

  “Shut up!”

  Even Jannik starts.

  “Now you listen to me, Guyin,” I hiss at him. “There are a thousand people out there who would work in your house, bat or not. People do not like to starve. So I can only assume that this prolonged staff problem is more down to the fact that you are a pathetic little spoiled House son who is throwing an extended tantrum because he didn’t get what he wanted, when he wanted, than in any shortage of willing labourers.”

  “You know nothing of the circumstances–”

  “I am not finished.” And Gris be damned, for once I will tell the truth to a House son and let hang the consequences. I’ve had enough of my own troubles and I’m too wrung out to drip pity over this idiot. Isidro is out there - anything could be happening to him - and instead of taking action, Harun will simply drown under what he thinks is inevitable. Saints. Saints and their bloody visions. I stamp one foot down, and Harun almost cringes before he recovers himself. “You will get over your snit, this instant. If you want us to help you, you will listen to what Jannik says, and when I return, I expect to find you in some semblance of order, approaching sober at the very least. I would ask that you are cleaned and dressed but I think I may be chasing fancies with such an unreasonable request. Now.” I crouch so that we are face to face. Even from here his breath is sour and foul. “Act like something resembling a man.” I stand. “Where is your House seal?”

  “What?”

  “Your House seal? I assume you still have some accounts in good standing with the banking merchants – if so, find your seal and give it to Jannik that he might organize the basics that you are seemingly incapable of organizing for yourself.”

  I’m fully expecting Harun to start shouting at me. I pause, half-breathless, ready to yell again, as he clambers to his fee
t.

  “Must you be so damn shrill,” he mutters as he digs through his coat pockets. “Here.” He tosses a silver cylinder to me and I catch it easily. The top of the cylinder has the familiar goat-like face of the Guyin unicorn in profile, worked in black glass.

  “Thank you.” I hand the seal to Jannik. As I’m about to leave the room, Harun calls me to stay.

  “What is it?”

  “And while I’m doing all this.” He pressed his fingers to his temple and grimaces. “Where will you be?”

  “Thankfully, far from you.” I slam the door closed behind me and smile in grim satisfaction as the sound sets of another round of groaning and cursing.

  A bubble is rising in my chest. I think I have waited all my life to yell at a House man.

  * * *

  Master Sallow looks dumbstruck when I ask him if he knows the way to a public house called the Greenfinch.

  “Certainly, my lady.” He has managed to recover a little of his incredulity. First the Hoblands, and now some public house in a less-than-salubrious area – poor Master Sallow must be starting to wonder if I have lost my wits.

  “Then you will take me there,” I say to him and smile. My moment of venting has left me feeling as if I could take on every damn person in MallenIve. I know where Carien likes to hide, pretending she is something more than a House brood-doe. She took me there with promises of an introduction to the artist Iynast. A promise she made good on, in her own confusing way.

  I don’t remember the name of the street, but it was not far from the Greenfinch, and I will find my way on foot. I instruct Master Sallow to wait for me, and he nods.

  The tea shop where she made her artistic confession is not hard to find. I push open the door and the little glass bells chime merrily as I enter. It’s nearing lunch time, and the shop is busier than before, all the tables taken by Hobs taking their brief respite from the day’s labour. They nurse porcelain bowls of tea and what appears to be the speciality, a bowl of unidentifiable greens and white porridge. A few are wealthier and have added a small fatty cut of meat to their dish. The smells of the boiled meat and strong tea and old sweat hang in the closed space. I scan the crowd of dark-haired Hobs, looking for a familiar face. Perhaps, after all, she does not frequent this place nearly as often as I had hoped. My thoughts were that it was a place where she felt safe, where she goes to ground.